On Nov. 22, 1963, 15-year-old Carrollton resident Cynthia Herschkowitsch and her neighbor drove to downtown Dallas for a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy.

The R.L. Turner High School sophomores caught the first leg of the motorcade as it turned from Main Street to Houston Street and then onto Elm Street.

“We saw them when it was first starting, and we saw the President and Mrs. Kennedy and the Connallys in the car, but you know it was really Jackie and John that we had come to see,” Herschkowitsch said.

But what began as a lively morning for Herschkowitsch and her neighbor, Phil Higgins, turned into one of the most infamous days in American history when the 35th president of the United States was assassinated in downtown Dallas. The effects of that day would go on to alter the city, the community and the country.

“I thought ‘Yeah I’ll go downtown with him, cut school and have fun,’” Herschkowitsch said. “And then it turned out to be a lot more than that.”

‘A moment of silence’

While Herschkowitsch and her neighbor were anticipating the motorcade, then-20-year-old Carrollton High School alumna Glenda Palmer and her coworkers stood at the window of a dentist’s office in the Medical Arts Building on Pacific Avenue. The building was not part of the route, Palmer said, but the former dental hygienist could see the cars drive through the intersection.

“We weren’t really, really close,” Palmer said. “We were up high; we could see down, we could see it was the motorcade going through, so all in our minds we saw the president go by.”

After the motorcade had passed Herschkowitsch, she and her neighbor stopped at Kip’s Big Boy before heading back to school.

“While we were having lunch there a man came in and said ‘The president’s been shot,’ but I didn’t believe it,” she said. “I was just in denial; I just did not believe it.”

The reality was also unfathomable for Palmer. Her mother called the dental office and broke the news shortly after the motorcade drove past the building.

“She told us, ‘The president’s been shot,’ and I can remember saying, ‘No mother, he hadn’t been shot because they just went by the window,’” Palmer said. “We had a radio there and we turned it on, and of course we heard everything that was going on. But it was unbelievable that we were just standing at that window looking out … nobody could believe that it happened anyway, and you certainly didn’t believe it happened in your town.”

It was just after Herschkowitsch arrived back at Turner around 1 p.m. that the grim news she had heard in the restaurant began to sink in. The sophomore was sitting in English class as the principal announced the news over the public address system.

“He was calling for a moment of silence because President Kennedy had been assassinated,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, it really happened, I can’t believe it, we just saw him.’ It was so real for me.”

Students sat in the classroom in stunned silence, Herschkowitsch said. And as teachers were crying and consoling each other in the hallway, students in another class felt differing emotions about the news.

Carrollton resident and Turner High School alumnus Dan Menendez, 66, recalls a friend of his voicing his emotions during class.

“The teacher, it was a Spanish teacher, came in and announced that the president had been shot, and he yelled ‘Yippy’” Menendez said. “ [The teacher] raked him over the coals. She just said, ‘That is disrespectful. He’s our president whether your parents voted for him or not.’”

Herschkowitsch, now 65, still remembers the days after Nov. 22, hearing about J.D. Tippit and Jack Ruby, and watching Lee Harvey Oswald bring transferred on live television.

“It was just three days of absolute, I would guess, shock and horror,” she said.

But it was the images from the president’s funeral like John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father that stuck out to her.

“The riderless horse with the stirrups turned backward oh my God, I cried and cried when I saw that because the symbolism just struck me,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I don’t tell people how that affected me, but that was just the saddest thing to me because the symbolism was just so striking and so final.”

Life lessons

Herschkowitsch has taught German at South Oak Cliff High School for 39 years. She has been interviewed by students about her experience on Nov. 22, 1963.

She also enjoys talking to students about the conspiracy theories, she said.

“I said, ‘There’s always so many different sides to every story, and you need to investigate every one because everybody has their own ideas about what really happened,’” she said. “It gets them thinking about ‘Hmm, maybe there’s more to this than the approved story line that they read in the history books.’”

She has remained in contact with Menendez. The two have seen each other at high school reunions and occassionally speak over the phone.

Despite the events that unfolded during her sophomore year, Herschkowitsch said she hasn’t spoken about the event during class reunions.

Since the assassination, Herschkowitsch has passed by the grassy knoll, but has never stopped to see it. She has also been asked by students if she has visited The Sixth Floor Museum. She hasn’t, she said, but it’s on her to-do list.

Herschkowitsch has also followed the Warren Commission, the deaths of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Sen. Ted Kennedy.

She has watched as history has unfolded.

“Some more conspiracy theories have just come up recently, I guess, because of the anniversary,” Herschkowitsch said. “And then you know Marina Oswald sold Oswald’s ring at auction just recently … so it’s like it’s just a never-ending story. It’s just constantly somebody’s bringing something up about it.”

Elizabeth Knighten is the editor for the Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Addison edition of neighborsgo and can be reached at 214-977-2264.

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